This SUMO-sized retrospective celebrates one of the world’s most influential photographers and the culmination of two years researching his archives. Gathering portraits from the 1950s to the 2010s, we discover some 300 subjects as varied as Nelson Mandela, the Beatles, the Queen, Salvador Dalí, Bill Gates, and Yves Saint Laurent, all printed big and bold, in Bailey’s signature style.

Collector’s Edition (No. 301–3,000), each numbered and signed by David Bailey, with a bookstand designed by Marc Newson. Each edition comes with a set of four book jackets featuring John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Jean Shrimpton, Mick Jagger, and Andy Warhol.

Limited SUMO Edition. Hardcover, numbered and signed by David Bailey, 19.7 x 27.6 in., 440 pages, with a bookstand designed by Marc Newson. Each edition comes with a set of four book jackets featuring John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Jean Shrimpton, Mick Jagger, and Andy Warhol

In 1965, portrait and fashion photographer David Bailey released his groundbreaking book Box Of Pin-Ups, securing him as the hip tastemaker for 1960s London cool. With Mick Jagger his best man at his wedding to Catherine Deneuve, Bailey was also the inspiration for the classic movie Blow-Up. From the Swinging ’60s to the present day, Bailey has never stopped pushing the boundaries of his signature in-your-face portraiture and is widely regarded as one of the great postwar photographers.

This big book of Bailey is the culmination of an incredible career, the result of two years’ worth of research into his personal archives. Through penetrating pictures of the beautiful and the notorious, the idolized and the powerful, friends and family, writers, artists, and fellow photographers, Bailey presents a sweeping cultural history of the last 60 years. Featured subjects include Andy Warhol, Salvador Dalí, Kate Moss, Nelson Mandela, Francis Bacon, Zaha Hadid, the Rolling Stones, Jack Nicholson, Brigitte Bardot, Margaret Thatcher, and hundreds more.

As his friend Damien Hirst writes in the foreword: “He’s the master of his art and he’s created a mind-blowing visual language.” Additional text includes a three-part essay on Bailey’s portraiture by noted photography critic Francis Hodgson.

Limited to a total of 3,000 numbered and signed copies, each edition comes with a bookstand designed by Marc Newson and a set of four book jackets featuring John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Jean Shrimpton, Mick Jagger, and Andy Warhol.

The Collector’s Edition (No. 301–3,000) is limited to 2,700 copies. The four Art Editions of 75 copies each (No. 1–300) all come with separate prints signed by David Bailey.

The artist

London-bornDavid Bailey(b. 1938) is widely acknowledged as one of the founding fathers of contemporary photography, having shot some of the most iconic portraits of the last six decades. Bailey’s early work helped both define and capture 1960s London, when he made stars of a new generation of models, including Jean Shrimpton and Penelope Tree. Bailey channeled the energy of London’s informal street culture to create a new style of casual coolness. Drawing inspiration from Modernism, he injected movement and immediacy into his work by using a very direct, cropped perspective. Bailey’s interests extend to commercials, film, painting, and sculpture.

The author

Francis Hodgson is Professor in the Culture of Photography at the University of Brighton, U.K. For many years until 2015, he was the critic for TheFinancial Times and former head of photographs at Sotheby’s. In 2017, Hodgson received the J. Dudley Johnston Award from the Royal Photographic Society, given for photography criticism.

The editor

Benedikt Taschen is the founder and managing director of TASCHEN. He started his professional life at age 18 in a 25-square-meter store in his native Cologne, Germany, which he named TASCHEN COMICS. By the end of the 1980s, TASCHEN titles were available in over a dozen languages at prices that finally made art books affordable for students and collectors alike—still the publishing house’s credo to this day. Other SUMO titles he has published include: Helmut Newton, Salgado’s Genesis, David Hockney, The Greatest of All Time, The Rolling Stones and Annie Leibovitz. He lives in Los Angeles and Berlin.

David Bailey

Limited SUMO Edition. Hardcover, numbered and signed by David Bailey, 19.7 x 27.6 in., 440 pages, with a bookstand designed by Marc Newson. Each edition comes with a set of four book jackets featuring John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Jean Shrimpton, Mick Jagger, and Andy Warhol

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